


if i loved you less, i might be able to talk about it more

by C_AND_B



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:00:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24862696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/C_AND_B/pseuds/C_AND_B
Summary: sometimes love is too raw to express. sometimes one language isn’t enough. sometimes you don’t even realise you’re speaking a love language from half the globe away. or kara and lena fall, and be, in love through a series of untranslatable words
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 218
Kudos: 2051





	if i loved you less, i might be able to talk about it more

**Author's Note:**

> title from jane austen. i wrote something like this for clexa an age ago and i was just feeling the vibes i guess so we move. 
> 
> disclaimer: all these words and translations are just what google tells me so please don't come for my monolingual ass. stay safe, don't be a racist and enjoy in spite of a definite mistakes i didn't proofread hard enough to spot!!

_Iktsuarpok:_ _Inuit._ _The feeling of anticipation when you're expecting someone that leads you to constantly check to see if they're coming._

She doesn’t know why she let Sam talk her into it in the first place. She’d always been very strong in her opinion that they were never a good idea, her conviction that blind dates were never anything less than terrible.

It was a terrible to wait for someone to turn up just to realise she was Lena Luthor and not want to be seen with her or want to be seen for all the wrong reasons. It was terrible to spend anxious minutes waiting for someone to turn up and be rude or eat with their mouth open or say something bigoted whilst eating with their mouth open until she couldn’t do anything but stand up and walk out the door.

It was terrible waiting for someone who was never going to be the person she actually wanted.

But Lena found herself spending those anxious minutes. She checks her phone twenty times between the minute they were supposed to meet and the second she clocks they’re ten minutes late. She checks it fifty more before she’s sure she’s being stood up. She checks it again when she tries to play that fact off.

Kara sends her seven texts in that period asking her how it’s going and what they’re like and what Lena is going to order for dinner. Lena’s responses essentially range from _it’s not_ to _I think I’m going to leave_. She’s halfway through raising her hand to call over the sympathetic looking waitress for the cheque when the chair across from her scrapes against the floor and a familiar body drops onto it.

“Kara, what are you doing here?”

“I heard the burgers here are amazing,” Kara says like that’s enough of an answer, picking up the menu casually and eyeing Lena over the top of it when she remains quiet. “You don’t deserve to be stood up, Lena. I know I’m not who you were waiting for but we can still have fun?”

Lena picks her own menu back up even if she’d already decided on the salmon, if only so Kara can’t see her face when she says, “You’re better than whoever was supposed to be here.”

“What if it was Wonder Woman but she got caught up in goddess business?” Kara quickly tests and Lena smothers her smile.

“Still better.”

“What about-“

Lena drops her menu to meet Kara’s grinning face, and her feelings, head on, “No matter what you dream up, you’ll always be the best, Kara. You’re my favourite.”

“Good,” Kara says, her smile more soft than testing now as she slides off her jacket and settles firmly into her chair. “Now put your phone away, I don’t want anyone pulling you away for boring business reasons while I’m trying to convince you to eat the biggest dessert I can find on the menu.”

Lena slips it into her bag without question. She doesn’t even think to pull it out for the rest of the evening. There’s nothing she needs to wait for anymore, she’s got everything she wants right here. Maybe not in quite the right way but when Kara smiles at her she thinks she’ll take it.

She’d take anything she was willing to give.

* * *

 _Kilig:_ _Tagalog._ _The thrilling feeling of butterflies in your stomach that you typically feel when something romantic happens._

The day Lena met Kara was the day she became a lepidopterist.

Her collection built in her stomach, boldly on display whenever Kara came by – never caged, forever fluttering free and bumping into all of her organs, their lack of coordination evident, always growing in number and vigour because Kara did romantic things like she breathed. Constantly and reflexively.

She brings Lena flowers once a week to refresh the ones in her office or in her apartment. Always bright, always vibrant, always placed in fresh vases with no comment beyond Lena’s quiet thank you because she hadn’t figured out what to say beyond that.

She holds Lena’s hands in crowds so they don’t lose one another in the masses. Her grip is never loose, her fingers never falter from intertwining with Lena’s, she never quite remembers to let go when they find themselves back alone. Not immediately. Lena revels in the forgetful moment where there’s nothing but them and a tangible connection. She hates the moment of remembrance.

She brushes stray hairs behind Lena’s ears and remembers the little things Lena mentions offhandedly and blows on her tea absentmindedly before she hands it over like she knows Lena won’t focus enough to do it herself before she simply takes a sip.

She keeps the snacks Lena likes in her kitchen. The healthy kind that Kara thinks taste like sadness and kale (her words, not Lena’s) but buys anyway - in the same way Lena’s shelves are packed with sugar she’ll never touch without Kara around.

The healthy kind that Lena really wants to eat right now but just… can’t… reach.

It starts with Kara inviting Lena round to hang out after a long day. It starts with a swift hug at the door and Kara disappearing to wash up from her latest super adventure. It starts with Lena having spent six hours in back-to-back boring meetings and not managing to find a gap to eat.

It continues with Lena spotting the Holy Grail and soon realising she can’t quite reach that part of the cupboard and it’s ridiculous. It’s entirely ridiculous because she’s not even that much smaller than Kara. She only has around two inches on her and yet, she tiptoes and stretches and pushes even higher onto her toes, and her fingertips just barely graze the bag of kale chips.

It ends with her hand wrapped around the bag. She doesn’t think about it much at first as she lets out a quiet victory cheer. She doesn’t question how she suddenly gained a foot of height until she realises her feet aren’t touching the floor, until she realises warm hands are securely gripping her hips, until she realises the strong form pressed against her back.

Then her feet touch the ground. Then she turns between wooden cabinets and a hard place and finds Kara so close, bracketing her in without intent and yet no intent to shift either.

The butterflies erupt.

“That was… effective.” _Hot_. She means hot.

Kara doesn’t seem to pick up on that subtext. She takes a step back, raising placating hands. “Sorry, I should’ve asked before I put my hands on you like that.”

“No, no, you’re fine. You’re good. Thank you for the snacks.” And yes, Kara was included in that.

Kara eyes the bag that Lena is attempting to open. “I feel like it’s blasphemy to call those a snack.”

“They’re delicious and they don’t make me gain seven pounds just from looking at them since we’re not all blessed with an otherworldly constitution and solar-powered abs.” Lena switches to using her teeth on the bag then. She still can’t quite break in.

“I do have to work for them a little. Maybe you saw me on the TV earlier, throwing an alien five times my size across the city.” Oh Lena saw it. Even running between meetings she saw it. She saw her muscles rippling and her smug grin and it was amazing. It was _really_ amazing.

“You mean that clip that was shown right before the reporter fawned over your biceps for five minutes and kept asking what you use your powerful arms and big hands for?”

“That’s not what she said,” Kara argues and Lena wordlessly unlocks her phone back to the video she hadn’t fully closed yet, clicks play and turns it into Kara’s view.

_So, Supergirl, when you’re not saving the city, what do you use your powerful arms for? Oh and those big hands, I bet you can do a lot with those big hands._

That’s about when she raises her own to measure against Kara’s. Kara who follows along politely on the video but clearly blushes in front of Lena now like maybe she wasn’t so innocent, like maybe she knew exactly what was happening, what the woman wanted.

Lena’s wondering how she can get someone fired from a company she doesn’t own when she gets distracted by Kara’s caught in the act smile. “Okay so that _is_ what she said.”

“If only she knew you use those _big hands_ to open snack bags for me because they’re being really annoying and I really need to eat something.” Lena shifts from sultry to whining mid-way through as she gives the back one last sharp tug before extending it out pathetically.

Kara’s face heats through as she takes it and pulls it open with ease. Lena doesn’t pay it much head as she takes it back happily and crunches one, promptly moaning in delight but she doesn’t miss the way the pinkness darkens before Kara turns to grab her own food.

She clears her throat when she turns back to Lena with her arms overflowing with different bags and boxes, a poptart already hanging out of her mouth as she carefully mumbles, “So… movie or show?”

Anything as long as it’s with you, Lena thinks. “Movie,” she says.

And the butterflies keep swarming.

* * *

 _Mamihlapinatapei:_ _Yaghan._ _The wordless, meaningful look shared by two people who both want to initiate something, but are reluctant to do so._

Kara has a habit of flying into Lena’s office at the strangest of times. Not always of her own volition – Lena will never forget the time she was launched through the glass and simply picked herself up with a sheepish grin before flying back into battle, nor the time she was so tired that she flew straight onto the couch and fell asleep like autopilot had decided this was her home.

(She keeps a blanket in her office now).

Sometimes she appears in the midmorning phantom zone between breakfast and lunch with a question she definitely could have texted but decided she needed an immediate answer for. Sometimes she turns up in the mid-afternoon with a new baked good she’s decided Lena has to at least try a bite of, even if she’d never pick it for herself.

Today she appears as the sun is setting behind Lena’s back when she knows she should already have gone home. She settles behind Lena with a gentle cough, except perhaps settle isn’t quite the right word because when Lena turns to greet her, she finds Kara anything but settled.

Her weight shifts from foot to foot. Her hands twist around one another. With a sense of urgency, she blurts, “I want to take you somewhere.”

Lena eyes her carefully for a second before pushing the papers in front of her to the side and shutting her laptop, sliding it gently into her bag and rising to her feet. “I’ll call Frank to the front?”

“No it’s- it’s kind of far. I was hoping you wouldn’t mind flying?” Kara asks, quickly adding, “I pinky promise not to drop you,” before Lena can question anything.

Lena chuckles, reaching her pinky out to catch Kara’s proffered one. “Well if you pinky promise.”

Kara smiles, using the link to pull Lena closer. She doesn’t pick her up just yet, no doubt thinking of the last time she tried to do it so abruptly when Lena almost broke her hand on her face in panic. Instead she allows Lena a second to prepare herself, a second to run her hands across the symbol on her chest and nod as she wraps her arms around Kara’s neck.

Kara lifts Lena so she’s perched on her toes, lifting them into the air and hovering for a second as Lena takes a breath. Then another. She shifts and feels Kara shift perfectly in tandem with her. One last breath and then a nod. Kara nods in return and moves the position of her hands on Lena to be able to switch her hold into a bridle style carry. Lena hides her face in the crevice of Kara’s neck as her hands tighten.

The flight over is wordless. Lena because she doesn’t trust her words not to tremble on the way out. Kara because Lena imagines she’s thinking about the time last week she accidentally swallowed an entire beetle whilst flying during battle.

It doesn’t take long before Lena feels sweet, sweet ground beneath her feet and the sudden obvious loss of Kara’s warmth wrapped around her body.

“I flew over here the other day when chasing that rogue valeronian and it made me think about that story you told me about you and your mum when you were little.” Kara’s staring out at the scene. Lena’s not. She stares right at Kara until she meets her gaze, until her eyes pin Lena even tighter to her spot. “I thought you might want to see it. I thought it might help you keep the memory.”

Lena turns to look at it then. Her chest tightens sharply for a beat and then relaxes into a steady rhythm – a gentle beat that hadn’t felt familiar in a long time. Not since the last time she stood in a field like this with her mother.

And, maybe she couldn’t remember her face without aid, maybe she couldn’t remember exactly what she sounded like. But she knew this feeling. The warmth of standing under the dipping sun beside the most important person in her life.

“Is it okay?” Kara asks. Lena opens her mouth, closes it sharply to catch the sob she finds herself utterly unprepared to explain. “I didn’t overstep did I?” The words are so cautious but they work like military-grade explosives blowing up a bike lock and a cry slips from Lena’s unprepared lips.

She’s in Kara’s arms before she can even think to fall into her embrace. Kara whispers reassurances in her ears until Lena’s shoulders stop shaking, whispers apologies for a few moments after until her cries peter off into sniffles and her eyelashes look like grass after rain.

“You didn’t overstep,” she says into Kara’s neck when she trusts herself to speak.

Kara runs her hands gently down her back until Lena takes the chance to look out on the place Kara found just for her. She finds an apologetic looking Kara when she turns her face back to her. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

“Thank you for bringing me here.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Do you have a place?” A place like this. A piece of the past echoed somewhere new.

Kara nods timidly. “I found myself in Midvale in the height of summer. Everything was alien to me – the people, the language, the infrastructure, the very ground I walked upon. I used to hide in the woods near the house. It didn’t so much bring me comfort as it did lessen the pain of the differences, as much as it muffled the sounds of the things I didn’t understand.

“Then autumn came. Autumn came and the leaves of the tree I always hid beneath turned to a familiar shade of red that caught the sun in just the right way as it set that for ten minutes I felt a weight lift in my chest. I went there everyday until there were no leaves left on the branches.

“I still go back there every year to see them,” Kara admits shakily, like it’s a fact she’s not familiar with sharing. Lena wonders how she got so good at pretending to show her hand whilst holding all her cards to her chest.

“Maybe you could show me one day?”

“I’ll show you every part of me you’ll let me.”

Lena’s heart clenches. “That’s a bold promise, Kara Danvers.”

“It’s a pinky promise and I don’t plan to have any trouble keeping it.” She holds her pinky out for the second time that evening and Lena chuckles even as she latches her own to it. Her laughter doesn’t make it very far before Kara pulls their joined fingers to her mouth to press a chaste kiss to Lena’s finger. “I mean it, Lena. You have me.”

“You have me too,” Lena whispers. She knows Kara will hear, knows she’ll know what Lena means, just as she thinks she knows that Kara means the same.

But neither of them budge.

An unstoppable force and an immovable object trapped in fear and scared of change.

* * *

 _Tartle: Scottish_ _. To hesitate in recognising a person or thing._

Nothing is as bad with Kara around. Lena decides that pretty early on in their friendship, even when she tried to turn her back on their friendship she found everything lighter with Kara around.

Nothing is as bad with her sunshine smiles and just in time jokes. It’s the excuse Lena uses for making Kara her usual plus one for every and all events she finds herself forced to through keeping up appearances and securing alliances.

Nothing is as bad when she can ignore it in favour of paying attention to Kara. Kara who left her standing at the bar to conquer the catering table and come back with her winnings. Hopefully sooner than it took Lena to finish her drink and be in need of a fresh one.

Nothing is as bad. Not even hearing, “well as I live and breathe, if it isn’t the Ice Queen.” She’s not heard that name said to her face in a while, not since boarding school – a fact Lena was quite pleased with – but as she turns Lena finds she doesn’t recognise the face grinning back at her.

She stares blankly, the pieces not falling into place. Maybe it was the beard covering his face that surely wasn’t there before. Maybe he was a little thinner. Maybe it was the complete opposite. Maybe Lena really just didn’t care at all.

“Really? Not even a hello? It’s Chip.” Lena tilts her head. “Chip Carter,” he furthers and it clicks. Son of a playboy hedge fund manager and a distant mother in it for the money. The kind of person Lena used to avoid, even though it pretty much meant avoiding everyone in her circles. She imagines the avoidance is how she got the nickname.

(It also probably had a little something to do with the time Lena got coerced into playing spin the bottle with some classmates and reflexively punched a boy who tried to kiss her.

She told him to sue her lesbian ass. He actually tried).

But still, her and Chip weren’t exactly friends, and she certainly wouldn’t have bothered talking to him even if she had recognised him. He proves that would’ve been the right choice when he opens his mouth next. “Suppose you came alone to this. I could warm you up, for old time’s sake.”

Lena’s halfway through scoffing at his leering eyes when Kara’s arm slips round her waist possessively but respectfully. Lena would’ve shot for at least a little bit indecent.

“No she has a plus one. Where’s yours? Or could you not pay someone enough to spend an entire evening with you?” Kara looks around the room dismissively before she plants her eyes on Chip and Lena has never seen her be so abrasive. It’s hot. _Really hot_.

“Figures you’d have to be a bitch to put up with her,” Chip scoffs. Kara’s hand flexes on her hip. Lena feels the fabric threaten to tear under her touch, smothers her gasp.

“Don’t speak about her like that,” she cuts in with a glare. “In fact, don’t even think it or I’ll destroy the little company your father stupidly left in your incompetent hands.” He reddens to the point where Lena expects a shout, almost gets a little giddy for it, until his eyes flicker to Kara and he deflates with a scoff and a quick exit.

Kara’s hand doesn’t make a quick exit.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Lena says.

“He didn’t have to be so rude and if he thinks you wouldn’t have people lined around the block the second you even suggested you were open to a relationship, he’s wrong.”

“I don’t know, Kara. I meant it when I told you most people wouldn’t touch a Luthor with a ten foot pole.” What she didn’t say was that she was the one who put the ten foot pole there, that it was the gate she used to block herself off and tell people that was as close as they got to be. People other than Kara that was. The gate had worked like a motion sensor barricade on the day they met.

Kara rolls her eyes. “Well those people are dumb. Anyone would be lucky for you to even consider sharing your life with them.”

“Anyone?” Lena asks and she doesn’t mean for it so sound so pointed, but it’s a little hard for it not to be when the question is completely locked, loaded and pointed at Kara’s chest.

Kara swallows harshly. “Anyone,” she repeats and her hand skirts just an inch lower. Lena covers her hand with her own and pushes it one more inch. “We should dance,” Kara says abruptly, leading her before she can even agree like she knows Lena’s answer wouldn’t be no.

They spend the rest of the night uninterrupted, Kara’s hand still an inch below friendly, Lena’s heart still a few inches past something more, thrumming in her stomach to the beat of a butterfly’s wings.

* * *

_Friolero: Spanish. A person who is especially sensitive to cold weather and temperatures._

It’s the middle of June. The middle of June in National City and it’s… snowing. True, unadulterated flakes of ice falling from the sky in uncoordinated flurries. The sky itself remains a vibrant blue in spite of everything it’s producing – enough of a sight to make it obvious this wasn’t natural, even if Lena hadn’t helped Kara capture the metahuman who caused it.

It was a long day that got them here. A long day that ended with them in the park, taking in the last remnants of what this week’s villain left behind. But it’s a long day that has Lena thinking maybe not all metahuman criminals are all that bad because, yes, they maybe did several questionable things and sewed the seeds of the cold she already felt taking over, but they also created the snow that Kara was watching with such intent wonder, like a child seeing it for the first time.

They couldn’t be that bad when they were the reason the snow existed to gather on Kara’s eyelashes, and tap dance a pinkness onto her cheeks, and place a charmingly grand smile on her face that was the very reason Lena accepted the walk in the park in the first place.

Unfortunately even the warmth of Kara’s smile wasn’t quite enough to warm the chill in her bones.

“I told you to bring more layers,” Kara chastises, taking in the shiver that runs through Lena and then runs through her once more for good measure in a vague threat before her teeth start chattering.

“I’m wearing two sweaters and a coat. Snow just hates me.”

“That’s a little dramatic, Lena.”

Lena cocks a challenging brow. “Dramatic? Kara, last week you acted like you were going to die because I snuck beetroot into the brownies I made you.”

“That was valid,” Kara argues.

“You’d happily eaten six before I broke the news.” She was even in the middle of telling Lena how they were some of the best brownies she’d ever tasted. It’s why Lena figured it was safe to admit she’d made them a little healthier than they seemed (Kara’s immediate groan and attempt to scrape every last crumb from her tongue told her it wasn’t quite as safe as she thought).

“Call it what it was – a betrayal.”

“Well this summer snow is a betrayal from the universe.”

“It’s pretty though,” Kara says, glancing back up with her mouth open like she might just catch the perfect snowflake on her tongue if she concentrates hard enough.

And it’s a cliché. It’s a complete and total cliché, but Lena’s eyes aren’t on the snow when she finds it in herself to reply, “Incredibly pretty.”

“But I did promise to always protect you once upon a time.” Kara turns her face back to Lena, sparing her a soft smile. “And that includes from your own inability to properly regulate your temperature so here.” Kara unwinds the scarf from around her own neck and drapes it round Lena’s, double wrapping the ends round and gently tucking it tighter under her chin.

Lena warms immediately.

It’s not because of the scarf.

Kara grins happily at her work before slipping her hand into her pocket and pulling an identical purple bobble hat to the one on her own head like she’d been waiting for this moment to come. She puts it on Lena’s head with careful adjustment, “Now we match.”

Lena doesn’t argue it’s not her style. She doesn’t make any jokes or quips or attempts to pull the offending item from her head, even if it clashes with the colour of her coat. Instead she adjusts it herself to stop from reaching out for Kara and says, “Thank you, Kara.”

In the end she doesn’t need to reach out because Kara catches her hand for her.

She tells herself it’s to share the warmth.

It’s definitely succeeding.

* * *

_Culaccino: Italian. The mark left on a table by a moist glass._

The first time Lena welcomes Kara into her apartment she’s far too nervous to remember to ask her to use a coaster. The second time she’s too busy wondering if, and hoping this, will be a regular thing that it skips her mind until Kara’s glass is securely settled. The third time she almost says it but then Kara laughs and it’s like she blacks out for a moment and returns to her coffee cup already firmly planted on the wood. The fourth time she gives up caring.

The fifth time she realises it’s ruined with marks. Except she doesn’t really think of it as ruined at all. It’s more like every mark is a different piece of Kara. Mug marks from late night teas when Kara comes to hide. Smaller circles from ice cold drinks given too much time between deep conversations to sweat into the wood. A spill from one thing. A chip from another. A ring from something else.

Lena starts to use them to catalogue their time together.

She starts to hope for another chance for Kara to make her permanent mark in her apartment, to paint herself onto the cold edges of her house and make it feel more like home.

She begins to forget the coasters that sit on a shelf close to the table until she finds herself holding Game Night for the superfriends for the first time. Until Kelly leans towards the table with her drink and takes a long searching pause. “This looks expensive. Coasters?”

Lena doesn’t think much of it as she points them out and Kelly slides them across the table under various glasses and bottles. She doesn’t think much of the frown on Kara’s face as she accepts her own and slips it under her glass to catch the stray droplets teetering towards the wood.

She does think a lot of how quiet Kara is from that point on. She doesn’t accuse Alex of cheating when she beats them all at Uno too many hands in a row. She doesn’t make jokes about how all of Brainy’s drawings during Pictionary seem to turn into literal workable blueprints. She doesn’t act as Lena’s hype man throughout Monopoly when she wipes the floor with them all.

She doesn’t do much at all. She’s just quiet. Quiet as the others file out of Lena’s apartment. Quiet as she stays behind to help Lena clean up the mess they made. Quiet as she alphabetises the games on the shelf, collects up stray glasses, stacks the coasters on the table.

The silence isn’t as comfortable as it usually is but it’s not until Kara has her hands dipped into soapy, hot water as she washes up with next to no sound that Lena finally decides she needs to know why.

She whips her dish towel at Kara lightly, as she asks, “Okay, what has you all pouty?”

“I didn’t realise you used coasters,” Kara says lowly and Lena pauses in drying the dish in her hands to look at her fully. Kara’s still focusing all of her attention on the task in front of her. Her jaw clenches like she knows she’s being watched, like she’s resisting giving into the pull of Lena’s eyes.

“That’s what has you upset? Kara, it’s fine. It’s just a table.”

Kara huffs. “An expensive table and you pointed Kelly to the coasters so easily which means you must use them often and I’ve just been putting everything on it so thoughtlessly.”

“Kara, I promise you, it’s really not a problem,” Lena implores, thinking nothing more of it as she walks to put a stack of plates in a cupboard across the kitchen, leaning against the counter there. It’s obvious Kara’s not giving up on it so easily.

“But I didn’t even consider it. Kelly did and I didn’t and why did you say something to her? Did I do something to make you scared to say something to me?” She stops cleaning. Her hands simply dipped in the water as she stares at the slowly popping suds in the bowl.

“I didn’t say anything because I started to like that it looked worn. I like that it looks like it’s lived a life and I like that it reminds me how comfortable you feel here, with me. I like that every mark reminds me of you. That’s why I told Kelly because the marks are your thing. _Our_ thing,” Lena admits, dropping the dish towel on the counter beside her. She hadn’t planned on moving but she knows it would’ve been moot regardless with the look Kara suddenly sends her way.

Her eyes are dark. Her intentions murky. Her body as still as Lena’s.

Until it’s not. Until Kara pulls her hands carelessly from the sink, dripping a delicate trail of water alongside her as she crosses the space between them and grabs Lena’s waist. The bubbles on her fingertips soak through Lena’s shirt as her arms slide more securely around her waist but Kara catches any argument, any gasp, any question with her mouth.

This kiss catches her off guard. Not because she couldn’t read the situation. Not because she didn’t think it had been sitting between them for quite some time. But because Kara doesn’t kiss her cautiously like she always expected her too.

She pins Lena’s hips to the counter and licks into her mouth - her tongue like honey trickling from a spoon, slow and gentle and smooth. Her arms tighten around Lena’s back when Lena meets her vigour with equal investment, teetering on the edge of lifting her but never quite committing.

She kisses Lena like it’s her first and last chance. She kisses Lena like she’s trying to irreversibly fold herself into her body. She kisses Lena like she’s trying to be the only thing she thinks about for the rest of her life, like she’s trying to carve her mark permanently on her brain, and her mouth, and her hips, and her thighs, and she might just succeed.

Lena already feels irreparably scrambled.

Her chest heaves when Kara pulls back with a gentle parting kiss. The world remaining a swirling dark as she refuses to open her eyes just yet. “What was that for?”

“I’m the table.”

Lena’s eyes shoot open in confusion. “You’re- huh?”

“You left your mark on me the second we met and then a thousand more every time we interacted and I never thought to protect myself and I’m not thinking about it now because I really want to just finally say that I like you, in an entirely non-platonic fashion, and I’m hoping that you like me too.”

“I definitely like you,” Lena says quickly and it’s like she can finally breathe again, or maybe she’s just stolen the air that gasps from Kara’s lungs when Lena runs her thumb pensively, _reverently_ , along her bottom lip. “I liked this too.”

“Maybe we could do it again… exclusively?”

Lena smiles softly at the unsureness coating her tone, the need weaving its way into each syllable, the want in each word. “I’ve been exclusively yours for a long time, Kara. But I’d like that.”

Kara’s smile breaks loose beneath her gentle exploration. “I’m gonna girlfriend you so hard.”

“I look forward to it.”

* * *

 _Jayus:_ _Indonesian. A joke so poor and unfunny that one cannot help but laugh._

Lena’s having a bad day.

The worst day of her life, which is perhaps an exaggeration, but she has a headache and cramps and she’s had to cancel on Kara every day this week to stay behind and complete boring paperwork. Kara’s still sent her gifts and texts and told her she’s sorry they’re both so busy but it sucks.

She’s stared so long at her work that she feels a little like the words have tattooed themselves onto her retina and it sucks. And the word sucks engrained itself into her vocabulary from hanging out with Kara too much and every time she thinks of it, she thinks of her, and that sucks.

She’s having a bad day.

She groans when a knock sounds on her office door. All that sound had really meant for the past few hours was that Jess was bringing more documents. She briefly forgets that she sent her assistant home a few hours prior as she squares her shoulders and attempts to tame her tired pout into something more professional than pathetic as the door shifts.

“You look like you’ve had a long day.” _Kara_. Her shoulders deflate.

“The longest,” Lena says on a sigh. She leans back in her chair, dropping her head to rest on the leather at the back to look up at Kara as she approaches from across the room.

“Well I know something that can make you smile...” she trails off, running her fingertips aimlessly along Lena’s face, smoothing the furrow of her brow, following the line of her jaw, dancing along the space her dimples usually occupy in Kara’s presence. “Your face muscles.”

Lena rolls her eyes but she lets Kara’s touch soften her face a little. “That joke was terrible.”

“I’ll tell you what was really terrible. I fell asleep whilst flying earlier and I dreamed I was swimming in an ocean of soda. Thankfully it was just a Fanta sea.”

“No,” Lena says but a smile threatens to spill across her face.

“Can you take a break? I heard about this new restaurant called Karma. There’s no menu, you just get what you deserve.”

Lena laughs, “Please stop.”

“One more. One more,” Kara says excitedly with a smile before she schools her features to the picture of seriousness. “How do you throw a space party?” She asks, waiting expectantly.

“I don’t know, Kara. How _do_ you throw a space party?”

Kara’s already giggling before she says, “You _planet_.”

Lena groans but her shoulders gently shake with laughter regardless of the voice in her head, the one she voices out loud, that says, “Your jokes are the worst.”

“You’re smiling though so they did their job. And, speaking of jobs, you’ve done yours enough for the day so I’m taking you back to mine and we’re going to fall asleep watching the Real Housewives of Central City after eating the biggest bowl of pasta.” That sounded amazing. Frankly, right now, it sounded like the best thing Lena had ever heard.

But all she can really see is the paperwork strewn across her desk. “I need to finish.”

“And you will. Tomorrow,” Kara says sternly. Lena still opens her mouth to attempt to argue. She doesn’t get very far with it at all. “You’re barely keeping your eyes open, Lena. You’re not gonna get very much work done when you’re face planting your desk in twenty minutes.”

“You make a valid argument.”

“I really do. I also give incredibly valid hugs.”

“Can I get a tester?” Lena tilts her head towards Kara’s stomach, nuzzling into the soft fabric of her jumper.

“Always.” Kara wraps her arms around her. Lena leans into the embrace for a moment before she tilts her head up for a soft kiss, still a little unbelieving that they just do this now.

She melts into the kiss completely, melts into Kara’s hold and her request. Lets Kara gather up her things and slip Lena’s heels off her feet and into her bag. Allows herself to lean into the arm wrapped around her waist until Kara’s basically doing the walking for her.

And sure, there’s a part of Lena that thinks she should argue that she can do things for herself, that she’s capable of looking after herself if she needs to. But they both already know that, just like they both already know that she doesn’t have to do everything alone anymore.

That she’s allowed to ask for things from the woman at her side and, in the moments when she’s too afraid to ask, she’ll do them anyway.

* * *

 _Slovenian_ : _Vedriti_. _To shelter from the rain._

Lena knows that Kara loves her.

She expresses it in actions and gestures and touches. It’s in her always buying Lena’s favourite brand of tea, and absentmindedly playing with her fingers during mission briefings that she’s supposed to be paying attention to, and always putting herself in the line of fire for Lena, always seeing the best in her and arguing with anyone who may not agree.

Kara exudes love with everything she does but she never quite _says_ it and so Lena doesn’t say it either because even if she _knows_ , a part of her is terrified that maybe she’s reading it all wrong, that maybe she doesn’t really know much of anything at all.

Lena doesn’t say it either even if she’s been thinking it since long before two months ago when Kara finally kissed her. Lena doesn’t say it even if it’s all she can think about sometimes when she sees Kara with bed hair and toothpaste stains. Lena doesn’t say it even when it feels like she’s practically shoving it back down her throat, even when smothering it takes more effort than finding the words.

It’s hard sometimes. It’s harder now.

When Kara asked Lena to go with her to the National City Light Festival to celebrate two official months of dating she already wanted to tell her she loved her from the excited look on her face. She wanted to say it when she showed up with flowers. She wanted to say it when she confessed to Lena that she’d memorised the information about every installation so they wouldn’t have to follow the guide, so that no leaflet could stop her from holding Lena’s hand.

She wanted to tell her when Kara sneezed and almost knocked an installation over.

And then the heavens open up without warning.

Kara’s quick in her move to pull Lena under a light sculpture to hide from the rain and Lena relaxes into the alcove, resigning herself to hoping it doesn’t last too long. Then she looks at Kara and thinks maybe she should hope for the exact opposite.

Specks of rain coat her glasses that she makes no attempt to wipe, instead flicking the lenses onto the top of her head to reveal eyes that have become no less piercing over time. Her cheeks are slightly flushed, highlighted by the installation’s gentle light that catches her face at such an angle that Lena’s almost convinced she was always supposed to be a part of the display.

Kara’s back sits slightly out of shelter so that Lena can be completely covered and she forgets to be afraid. Kara is saying something, something, something else and all Lena can think is, “I love you.”

Kara halts. “You love me? As in you… love me?”

“I love you. As in, I’m in love with you and I have been in love with you for a long time and I just wanted you to know.” She thought she needed Kara to say it. She thought she’d need Kara to say it back but she doesn’t. She just needed Kara to know. Kara who would always protect her and care for her and hold her love with a practised gentleness that Lena had never known before.

“I love you too. As in, I’ve been trying to say those words for a long time and I couldn’t figure out how but your way was good.” Hearing it back was definitely nice though.

“Great.” Lena nods because she doesn’t know what to do now. She’s never really gotten this far before. And Kara just laughs, still not flinching at the rain dripping down the back of her neck.

“Come on, we haven’t seen my favourite light installation yet.”

“Kara, it’s still raining,” Lena argues but steps out from under the covering at Kara’s insistence anyway, gasping at the freezing cold droplets.

“It’s not raining where we’re going."

Lena laughs when Kara leads her into her apartment building. Laughs harder when Kara makes up some fake story and concept behind the lamp that sits beside her bed. Stops laughing when Kara paints her words of love onto her mouth.

She loves, she loves, she loves and she’s loved in return.

She never thought she’d get here.

* * *

 _Cafuné_ : _Brazilian Portuguese. The act of running your fingers through someone’s hair in a loving way._

“I’ve never felt this relaxed after a solar flare,” Kara speaks into the comfortable silence that permeates her apartment. Her face staring up at Lena from where it rests in her lap, Lena’s fingers running softly, but absentmindedly, through her hair.

It’s been Kara’s favourite way to relax since she solar flared two days prior. The loss of her powers culminating in an obvious gain in need to be touched. She leans into it even more so than usual, offering gentle touches and wordlessly asking for them in return - a way to ground herself when her entire view of herself in the world had momentarily shifted.

And she does look relaxed with her smiling eyes and her feet swinging over the edge of the couch, practically purring at the rhythmic raking of Lena’s fingers. She’s beautiful.

“Probably because your last experiences include walking into an armed robbery and being held in a cage by my psychotic mother.” Lena hadn’t been forced to deter her from leaving to walk into danger yet. Her current diversion plans pretty much included her boobs and pizza (she doesn’t think she really needs to put too much more work into them).

“Yeah probably,” Kara chuckles.

“What does it feel like? Being human when you’re not used to being human?”

“Thank you for not calling it normal.” There’s a tired sort of tension in Kara’s tone that doesn’t even attempt to hide her history of feeling anything but normal. A history of hearing that she was weird, and abnormal, and dangerous for simply existing, even if much of it was never said to her face, even if much of it was just written on people’s own.

“Well, technically I’m an alien to you.”

“Prettiest alien I’ve ever seen.”

Lena’s fingers don’t falter as she drops a kiss to Kara’s smiling lips. “My thoughts exactly.”

“It’s weird. Feeling human. Not bad, not good, just… weird. It’s like being handed so many freedoms – to touch things without fear, and listen without hearing everything, and feel _everything_ inside me without having to regulate it – at the same time that so many other freedoms disappear.

“Usually it makes me feel tense. Unprepared. A little like I’ve lost the ability to do the one thing I was made to do. But not now, not with you. I still feel a little invincible right now… Is that cheesy?”

 _A little bit._ “I think it’s sweet.”

“You’re biased.”

“Oh, _absolutely_.”

Kara picks up Lena’s free hand that rests on her stomach, runs her fingers along Lena’s palm, her knuckles, her fingertips, mapping them one by one. “Thank you for taking care of me today. I know you blew off that new investor meeting you were talking about all of last week.”

“You’re more important. I mean, imagine if you’d stubbed your toe. Who would kiss it better?”

Kara cocks a brow in the way Lena likes to think she took from her after years of gentle corruption, “I didn’t realise you had a foot fetish.”

“Not in the slightest, darling. You may not be cheesy but your feet definitely are.”

Kara gasps, sits up, affronted. “Take that back.”

“It’s true.” It’s not, Kara’s entire body smelled like fucking cinnamon at Christmas, but Lena loves the way Kara huffs at her refusal and lays her head back down in Lena’s lap in defeat, directing her to resume running her hands through her hair.

“You’re lucky I love you, Lena Luthor,” Kara jokes.

“You’re lucky I love you too, Kara Danvers,” Lena returns. Mostly a joke.

“I am,” Kara says earnestly and Lena smiles, lets her eyes drift back to the film they’ve definitely missed the climax of and can’t even bring herself to care.

She’d rather watch Kara. 

Given two choices she’d always pick Kara.

* * *

 _Karelu: Tulu Indian_ _. The mark left on the skin by wearing something tight._

Lena shrugs off the weight of the day as she steps into their apartment. _Their apartment_. It still feels weird to phrase it that way sometimes, still makes her grin even after spending the day half wishing someone would enact some plot against her life just to save her from board meetings.

“Kara!” She calls out, even though the darkness surrounding her tells her not to expect much in response. She doesn’t even bother turning on the lights as she walks blindly to the bedroom, turning on the low lamp beside the bed and pulling her shirt over her head, reaching behind to finally release the clasp of her bra on her back.

She eyes the indents left behind by the day in the mirror, gently kneading them with tired fingers. Her eyes halfway closed when a breeze flutters through the window and familiar hands take over the job for her from behind. Her eyes slip fully shut as she leans into Kara’s front, tipping her head back to press a kiss to the bottom of her jaw. Kara kisses her cheek in return.

“Hi, darling. That’s nice.” There’s nothing inherently sexual about the gesture in spite of itself as Kara’s soothing touch dances along her skin. She leans further into it.

“You could just not wear a bra you know,” Kara says. Lena peeks her eyes open to catch sight of her in the mirror - all sparkling eyes and teasing grin.

“Whilst I’m sure my board members would love a peek at my nipples, I’d rather not give them one.”

Kara shifts to cup her boobs, nipples hidden from view. “I could just walk around holding them up like this for you all day instead.”

“You’re an idiot,” Lena says and she means it, but she also apparently loves idiots so she reaches up to slide her hands over Kara’s light grip, presses them in tighter. 

“I task anyone to have an intellectual thought while you’re topless.”

Lena laughs, “I never would’ve guessed you to be such a boob girl when we met.” It hadn’t taken very long to figure out once Lena finally gave into admitting Kara had spent years watching her. Just one frozen moment in which Kara discovered the metal bars pierced through her nipples followed by the happy sigh. Just one night of Kara pressing her lips to every inch of her breasts and seemingly forgetting any other part of her body existed.

“Well that’s because you thought I was strictly dickly,” Kara points out, what Lena supposes she thinks is helpfully.

“Please stop letting Nia teach you things.” Kara laughs at the resignation in her tone. She ducks to press apologetic kisses to the marks left on Lena’s back. Spins Lena’s body in her grip so she can lay her lips on the front ones too. (She was all about justice and fairness after all).

Lena fingers follows the shell of Kara’s ear with gentle ease, smiling softly into the kiss Kara rises to offer her. “Tell me about your day?” She breathes onto Lena’s lips. Lena can’t help but soften further at the genuine interest in her tone.

“Okay but then we’re going back to the boob thing.”

Kara grins, picking Lena up and throwing the both of them onto the bed. The bed groans threateningly for a moment before it settles. Neither of them pay it any heed. “Hearing about your day and boobs? Did my birthday come early this year?”

“I repeat: you’re an idiot.” She also repeats. She really, _really_ loves idiots.

“Your words hold no weight when you’re still going to let me fuck you into the mattress in like thirty minutes,” Kara scoff confidently.

Lena’s entire body lights up like a firework. “ _Rao, Kara._ ”

Kara’s hand tightens on her hips. “Day first and then dirty talk, Lena.”

“You started it,” she argues petulantly but she starts from the beginning anyway, even when Kara tells her she doesn’t need to know about the parts she was there for, even when Kara laughs at Lena narrating how she watched her eat cereal for five minutes before forcing herself to leave for work.

She tells her all the stupid little things. All the things most people wouldn’t care to hear but Kara listens intently and ask questions about things Lena’s mentioned before in passing and makes jokes about the people she knows Lena doesn’t like, gives praise to the things Lena says she’s proud of.

And later, when it’s all over, when the room is bathed in a gentle red light and Kara’s breath is stuttering out more ragged than usual, it’s Lena turn to loosen the straps around Kara’s hips and thighs and press her lips to the indents with no intent beyond reverence, beyond basking in the beauty beneath her.

* * *

_Lagom: Swedish. Just the right amount._

Kara knows exactly what Lena likes without even asking.

She makes her coffee just the right amount of strong, and hugs her just the right amount of hard, and distracts her from work just the right amount with coffee that is just the amount of strong and hugs that are just the right amount of hard and Lena’s so in love with her that she doesn’t know what to do with herself most of the time.

She thinks the answer is to ask Kara to marry her.

But having that answer doesn’t mean knowing the right way to ask.

She writes herself speeches, and scripts that she hopes Kara will follow without having read, practices them in front of the mirror and on her drive to work and when she’s in the shower.

She asks Brainy for advice and then immediately corrects herself when he starts stuttering and asks Kelly instead because he may be one of her best friends besides Kara and Alex but he was even more hopeless than she is.

Kelly doesn’t help much either. It’s a lot of affirmations and genuinely good advice and Lena doesn’t take a single piece of it in. The hug Kelly gives her is nice though - it makes it all feel less daunting for about ten minutes until she sees Kara’s smile again.

She tries a thousand things and none of them help.

She’s thinking through a thousand more as she stands in their kitchen, staring at the ring that was the last thing she had left of her mother, when she hears a key in the door and she decides that thinking is the problem. Not thinking is the answer.

She’s not thinking when she drops onto one knee in front of the door and starts talking the second she sees Kara’s startled face. “Marry me?!” She says. Except then it’s not just Kara’s startled face in the doorway, it’s a very amused Alex and sympathetic Kelly. “Oh… hello.” She might hyperventilate. She might actually already be hyperventilating.

Kara drops to her knees to meet her, “Are you okay?”

Lena laughs humourlessly. “No. No I’m not. I got this ring out of storage four months ago and I’ve been trying to write this speech for three and I can’t get anywhere because I can’t explain how I feel despite speaking four separate languages.

“I just know that I want to spend the rest of my life waking up to you and going to sleep with you and being dragged to that ridiculous famer’s market you love so much, just to listen to you get excited about how perfect the peaches are because you’re peaches to me. God, that’s a stupid analogy. This whole speech was stupid but I just… will you marry me?”

“The farmers market isn’t stupid, the pumpkin patch is open next week, and personally I thought that speech was pretty perfect. Just the right amount of life-changing panic.” Kara smiles. Lena catches her breath just to wait for her to steal it again.

“Is that a yes?”

Kara kisses her chastely, taking the ring from the box and slipping it onto her finger with a speed Lena doesn’t think is entirely human. “That’s an always, you dork.”

“Hi, guys, what are you doing here?” Lena jokes, looking up at the other two bodies in the doorway. Kelly already has tears trickling down her face, Alex doesn’t look like she’s fairing much better. Lena can’t help but preen at the genuine happiness on their faces.

“Would you believe Kara told us we had to try the iced tea you made from her favourite farmers market peaches? She said it was perfect, not too much sugar like Eliza’s. But, now that I think about it, what I’m actually craving is a milkshake. What about you Kelly?” She asks dramatically.

Kelly nods in kind, wiping her eyes. “Milkshake sounds perfect.”

Alex winks at her as they leave and it’s not the least bit subtle and Lena doesn’t care at all because Kara is kissing her the second the door is shut and asking her how it feels to be the idiot for once and telling her she can’t wait to be her wife. _She can’t wait to be her wife_.

Lena wakes up the next morning to pancakes with the perfect amount of blueberries brought to her in bed and Kara presenting her with a Kryptonian betrothal bracelet she’d been handcrafting for months in secret at the fortress. It’s everything. She’s everything. She can’t describe it any better than that. She would never be able to describe the way she loved Kara any better than that.

But she had the rest of her life to keep trying.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: c--and--b


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